Heartbreak in the Kingdom

I sometimes wish I’d taken the blue pill is a lament by my dear brother in Christ Tim Archer. Please take a moment to go by his blog and read this piece before reading my message here.

How do you deal with the heartbreak that comes from men using the blue pill to justify divisiveness and cruel judgement, while the powers and principalities of this world continue to crush the helpless ones that Christ sent US to rescue, no matter who, no matter where?

I’m SO TIRED of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic while people are freezing to death because we won’t let them in the stupid boat because they don’t want to get in for the right reasons!

They’re dying, and they want life! Maybe if everyone who knows the Bible truth about baptism started LIVING resurrection lives, we wouldn’t have to have even one more debate about it!

But, then I remember that it is those very powers and principalities within our own ecclesial structure that have crushed so many of our brothers and sisters to the point where they believe the blue pill is the only Godly choice, and my heart breaks. It is so much easier to fight them… it is so much harder to remember to love them.

Peacemaker is one of the hardest kingdom jobs. It, as much as anything else, got Jesus nailed up.

Dallas Willard writes, “Just look at the list of the ‘written off,’ of the ‘sat upon, spat upon, ratted on.’ … The merciful are always despised by those who know how to ‘take care of business.’ …The peacemakers are here too. (‘Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.’) They make the list because outside te kingdom they are, as it is often said, ‘called everything but a child of God.’ That is because they are always in the middle. Ask the policeman called in to smooth out a domestic dispute. There is no situation more dangerous. Neither side trusts you. Because they know that you are looking at both sides, you can’t possibly be on their side.

“But under God’s rule there is recognition that in bringing good to people who are in the wrong (as both sides usually are) you show the divine family resemblance, ‘because God himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked’ (Luke 6:35 REB). The peacemaker deals precisely with the ungrateful and the wicked, as anyone who has tried it well knows.”

Father, grant us the love and courage and mercy and likeness of Christ that will allow us to make peace with all those who love Your coming.

in HIS love,
Nick